Home Grown Tomatoes

There is a massive range of tomato plants available, something like 700 varieties, and they come in all shapes, sizes and colours. So which is the best tomato plant for you to grow?

When choosing, one of the most over riding considerations to take into account is what they are going to taste like, after all when you are growing tomatoes at home that is one of the primary reasons for doing so, otherwise you may as well go and get the plastic ones from the supermarket. It’s quite difficult to recommend a variety for taste because everyone’s taste is different but what a lot of people opt for are the Heirloom varieties, mainly because they are as the name suggests an older and more traditional type of tomato which are full of flavour but may not have some of the more modern characteristics built in such as disease resistance.

Talking about disease resistance and to help ensure that you actually get some lovely fruit from your tomato plant it is a good idea to pick a tomato type that has a reasonable level of resistance to disease, especially if you have had trouble in this direction in the past. Check out the seed packets and make sure that they have a natural resistance to fusarium wilt and verticillium, these are two of the most common tomato diseases that they can get from the ground.

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There are a couple of ways for approaching tomato growing in a greenhouse, you can either dig and prepare the soil of the greenhouse ready to accept the tomato plants or you can grow the plants in a container such as a plant pot (12″ diameter) or growbag.

Realistically most growbags that are available which can be 35 or 40 litres in size are only enough to support two plants. There are ways in which you can push this out to 3 plants but for the cost of a growbag its probably as well just to stick to 2 plants, particularly if you take good care of them and produce lots of fruit.

If you go for pots then you should steralise them before use, to do this you can use a dilute solution of a suitable disinfectant, something like Jeyes fluid is perfect for this task.

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Growing Tomatoes – How to Stop an Earwig Party on Your Tomato Plants
By Diane Palmer

Tomato Plants suffer from pests, just like any other plant in your garden. But personally, I found Earwigs to be the biggest pain.

They love to eat the leaves of a tomato plant, and if there are enough of them, this can kill the plant. If you are just battling a few, then, picking them off by hand may work.

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fresh juicy tomatoes straight from the garden to the dining table

When you are just starting out with your own vegetable gardening, a wise choice is to include tomatoes in your choice of plants because they are one of the best plants for a beginner to try his or her hand with. Strictly speaking of course tomatoes are not vegetables they are actually a fruit, but most people categorize them as a vegetable and they are a classic ingredient for a lovely summer salad. There really isn’t anything nicer than having your own home grown tomatoes sitting freshly picked on your plate.

Tip Number 1 – correct spacing

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